But the company doesn’t plan to re-open the now-censored portion of the site any time soon.

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“We do not have any intention to restore the [adult services] category,” William Clint Powell, the company’s director of customer service and law enforcement relations, told the House Judiciary Crime subcommittee, which is examining child sex trafficking.

“Taking that step may be a step backward in terms of addressing the core causes of the issue,” he added, because criminals are now using other web sites that are not as well regulated.

The company, under pressure from government officials, started manually reviewing every ad posted on the site in May 2009 to go after pimps looking for customers there.

Those efforts weren’t enough, however. After criticism from several attorneys general, like Connecticut Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal, the company took down the adult services site on Sept. 3, replacing it with a sole word: “Censored.”

Craigslist lawyer Elizabeth McDougall criticized the shutdown, which she said was prompted by intense public pressure and requests from attorneys general.

“A lot of advocacy groups think that taking down adult services was the wrong thing to do,” she said. “It’s much more difficult to find the victims now dispersed on these other sites that are noncooperative. Craigslist made this decision to do it here but that does not mean it’s the company position that this is the right move.”

The appearances break the company’s silence over the past year, as it has faced mounting criticism from law enforcement officials and advocacy groups. That criticism came to a head this summer, when the company was summoned to Washington to speak with White House and Justice Department officials.